Pure and impure gestes: the generation of history in Jean d’Outremeuse's Myreur des histors

ABSTRACT

Scholars have long debated the place in medieval historiography of Jean d’Outremeuse's Myreur des histors, a universal history in celebration of Liège written in French around 1399. The abundance of Old French epic material in a chronicle that, according to its author, contained translations of only Latin sources, was once a source of outrage. The Myreur now holds significant interest, however, for its evidence of late medieval narrative strategies. This study demonstrates the Myreur's deliberate adaptation of epic material to glorify Liège. The author reimagines the Carolingian past as a source for future historical narratives by knowingly altering the genealogical framework of the chanson de geste universe. Carrying tales of sexual impurity, he describes the demise of the Carolingian line and transforms figures from epic to function within his linear history. This inventive approach allowed him to create a new hero- and history-generating lineage for his universal history.     

Domus Willisi: A Neuro‐Architectural Tour*

Abstract

Fifteen sites in England today can be identified with Dr. Thomas Willis, the Oxford physician and anatomist, who was the founder of neurology. Four of these were domiciles; Beam Hall, where Willis and his colleagues met to study the brain and nerves, can be claimed as the first Neurological Institute. The last dwelling place of Willis is Westminster Abbey, where in 1961 his memorial stone was renewed by neurologists and neurosurgeons. Part of this original stone marks the new Brain Imaging Centre at the Montreal Neurological Institute, where the name of Thomas Willis shares a place in the Hall of Neurological Fame.     

Richard Fishacre's Sentences Commentary,the Oxford Studium,and Thomas Aquinas

Abstract

For three years Oxford was the only Dominican foundation in England and so it was the place for novitiate formation, for a priory studium, and for further and higher studies in theology. When Robert Bacon, a regent master in theology, entered the Order, 1229–30, a chair of theology became attached to the Oxford School. Richard Fishacre (c. 1200–1248), who was apparently destined for the priesthood in Exeter, was the first Englishman educated in the Dominican Order to incept in theology at Oxford, under his friend and teacher, Robert Bacon, in about 1240. Some time approximately between 1241 and 1245 Fishacre produced his Sentences Commentary. The present article focuses on Fishacre, the production in the Oxford studium of his commentary on Peter Lombard's Sentences and the way in which it subsequently came to the attention of no less a figure than Thomas Aquinas.     

“Did that play of mine …?”: James Connolly,Cathleen Ni Houlihan and staging revolution

Abstract

Despite the crucial position he occupies in Irish history as one of the leaders of the Easter Rising, and the political – and emotional – impact of his subsequent execution, while wounded, by the British Army on 12 May 1916, the writings of Edinburgh-born James Connolly have often been overlooked in both Irish and Scottish studies, and not just in accounts of the Rising but also in the wider context of cultural connections, including cultures of commemoration. In particular, Connolly’s surviving literary work, including Under Which Flag?, the drama staged on the eve of Easter 1916, as well as poems and songs, has had limited attention. This article reconsiders Under Which Flag? in comparison with Yeats and Gregory’s Cathleen ni Houlihan in order to demonstrate the central place the drama holds as a continuation – and complication – of Connolly’s political and journalistic writings. If Connolly is a neglected figure as a writer – as opposed to a political leader and martyr – then the play he left behind (once thought to have been lost, like another of his dramas, The Agitator’s Wife) affords us an opportunity to reassess his contribution to the struggle for independence as part of its literary wing.     

Jens Bircherod’s In Timaeum exercitatio historico-philologico-philosophica (1682): Platonic cosmology in seventeenth-century Denmark

ABSTRACT

This article examines a previously unstudied dissertation on Plato’s Timaeus presumably authored by the Danish bishop Jens Bircherod (1658–1708). By means of a study of Bircherod’s sources and interpretative method, it assesses the place of his In Timaeum exercitatio historico-philologico-philosophica (1682) in the history of philology and philosophy, and in the context of seventeenth-century Lutheran pedagogy. It shows how Bircherod makes use of Plato’s dialogue against the background of early modern religious debates, and how his method largely follows the historicist approach that had begun to characterise the reception history of the Timaeus since the late sixteenth century. It argues that Bircherod wrote his historical-philological-philosophical exercise on the Timaeus to demonstrate the existence of divine providence and monotheistic tendencies in antiquity, and to harness Plato’s cosmological treatise to the cause of Christian apologetics.     

Thomas Traherne,Thomas Hobbes,and the Rhetoric of Realism

Abstract

Thomas Traherne has often been seen as a mystic detached from the turbulence of his period. Recent scholarship has attempted to place him more firmly in context. This article contributes to this trend in arguing that Traherne's late works, especially Commentaries of Heaven, were shaped by the pressure of responding to Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan. Though Traherne makes only one direct reference to Hobbes, his idiosyncrasies in thought, argument, and mode of expression are all fundamentally influenced by the need to counter Hobbes's account of ethics, metaphysics, and language. Traherne is particularly concerned to assert and display an ardent realism against Hobbes's nominalism. In doing so, he creates a complicated play of rhetorical figures, especially abusio or catachresis, as embodying theological commitments. This both places Traherne more clearly against the background of the intellectual history of the period in which he lived, and demonstrates his particularity as a writer.     

Ruins about Merj Hîn in Subalpine Lebanon

Abstract

An attentive examination of the impressive finds of the mausoleum uncovered in 2007 in Herodium has demonstrated that these are not in accord with the characteristics of Herodian architecture as postulated by the late Prof. Ehud Netzer. The following four arguments show that this monument, which was indeed built by Herod, did not serve as his eternal resting place: ? Its moderate dimensions.

? The absence of an appropriate gateway to the burial ground, and an adequate assembly space around the tomb.

? A stratigraphic argument: The stairway leading up to the palace-fortress on the hilltop leaves the mausoleum ‘in its shade’, being also overlaid on top of the single irrigation pool that served the small garden that had surrounded the tomb.

? The absence of any correspondence between the axis of symmetry of the mausoleum, and that of Greater Herodium, indicating that these two were entirely different building projects.

Two alternative proposals are presented for the possible locations of the tomb, which might have disappeared.     

God,Justice and Society

Abstract

This non-evaluative overview of God, Justice, and Society: Aspects of Law and Legality in the Bible summarizes Jonathan Burnside’s introduction to biblical law and his demonstration of its value as a resource for modern legal issues     

Crimson,Scarlet, Murrey and Carnation: Red at the Court of Henry VIII

Abstract

Red, in all its various shades, was a colour with many associations at the court of Henry VIII. This article presents a thematic analysis of the key circumstances when red clothing was worn at Henry VIII's court, namely the robes worn at sessions of parliament by the nobility and secular clergy, the livery issued at coronations, as well as livery given to members of the king's household and his army in 1544. In addition, the king wore red for key days in the liturgical year as his medieval predecessors had, while it also formed part of his everyday wardrobe. Red was also significant for others at the Henrician court, including the secular and ecclesiastical élite. As such, it was a colour that was associated with wealth, status and parliamentary authority.     

‘The Epitheatrical Cartoonist’: Matthew Somerville Morgan and the World of Theatre,Art and Journalism in Victorian London

This article examines the vibrant cultural milieu inhabited by one of Victorian Britain's most famous cartoonists, Matthew Somerville Morgan. Morgan is well-known as the cartoonist who attacked Queen Victoria's withdrawal from public life (and her associations with John Brown), and the lifestyle of Albert, Prince of Wales, in the short-lived rival to Punch: the Tomahawk. Likewise, his post-1870 career in New York as cartoonist of the ‘Caricature War’ over the 1872 Presidential elections, and involvement with ‘Buffalo’ Bill Cody have been well-studied. However, his involvement with the world of the 1860s Victorian stage – and the social circles in which he moved – have not been given close attention. This broader social, cultural, and economic context is essential to understanding Morgan's role as a cartoonist-critic of politics, class, gender and art in Victorian Britain. Special attention is given to the ways in which Morgan's work as a theatrical scene-painter informed his other pursuits, including his political cartoons for Fun, the Comic News and the Tomahawk. So central was the theatre to Morgan's life story that he may be appropriately described as an ‘epitheatrical’ figure. Indeed he is one of the most spectacular exemplars of the interconnected worlds of journalism, high art and theatre in Victorian London. The theatre provided him with the artistic and journalistic connections needed to raise himself above his lower-class origins; to move in ‘clubland’ and fashionable bohemian society; and to win an influential place in the key political and cultural debates of his age.     

Literacy in the Byzantine World

Abstract

The historian Nicephorus Gregoras, writing of the Patriarch Athanasios I, dismisses him scathingly as <inline-graphic href="splitsection4_in1.tif"/><inline-graphic href="splitsection4_in2.tif"/>. Yet we know that Athanasius, who came from the countryside near Adrianople, was reading the Lives of Saints before the age of twelve. And his surviving writings—homilies, encyclicals, canonical decisions, letters, etc.—fill the 204 folios of codex Vaticanus graecus 2219. Most of these writings still await publication. But the recent edition by Mrs. Alice-Mary Talbot of 115 of Athanasios' letters shows that he wrote fluent literary Kaine Greek, without the archaizing affectations of Byzantine Atticism and with occasional voluntary or involuntary lapses into the spoken language of his time. He was no stylist: for him it was the matter, not the manner, that counted. He had little acquaintance with classical Greek literature. But in addition to the Scriptures, which he constantly quotes, he was familiar with the more widely read works of the fourth-century fathers, knew the basic texts of civil and canon law, and could quote the Epanagoge. Clearly he was no illiterate, but a professional user of the written word.     

“Words fail us”: Beckett,Leacock, and Johnson

ABSTRACT

This article will look at political treatments of language in Samuel Beckett’s early novel Watt and place the novel’s linguistic scepticism in conversation with three authors, the lexicographer Samuel Johnson, the language theorist Felix Mauthner, and the English-born, Canadian parodist Stephen Leacock. The paper will argue that Beckett, like Leacock, engages in Mauthnerian critiques of language, destabilising Johnsonian formulae for language standardisation. But while Leacock fails to develop the political implications of his critique of language, Beckett’s understanding of language standardisation is implicitly political, informed by Johnson’s conception of speech as the predicate of national identity, a standard for inclusion which Watt gleefully antagonises. Challenging nationalist calls for controls on language, Watt interrogates the ways that campaigns for linguistic unity will engender exclusionary attitudes towards the nonconforming and bar access to that speech and identity which falls outside of normative frameworks.     

Oliver O'Donovan's Critique of Autonomy

Abstract

More than any other contemporary theologian, Oliver O'Donovan has revived political theology as a field of enquiry. Yet O'Donovan has been consistent in his critique of the modern idea of autonomy, judging it to be at odds with the more communitarian idea of covenanted community found in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. He contrasts this modern idea, and its political implications, with the older biblical idea, also adding some basic points from Aristotle's idea of the polis. But unlike many contemporary communitarians, O'Donovan is also able to incorporate the idea of human rights into his political theology. He sees this supposedly modern idea having fuller precedence in the biblical idea of mishpat ("justice"), which he takes to be God's primordial claim on His covenanted community, a claim that sufficiently grounds both individual rights and communal rights and which enables them to function together. However, O'Donovan draws the line when it comes to the modern social contract theory, arguing that it is at odds with biblical teaching that the primary responsibility of rulers is to divine law. While agreeing with O'Donovan's rejection of autonomy and his acceptance of human rights, this paper argues against O'Donovan's theological rejection of social contract theory. Instead, it argues that a social contract is consistent with the doctrine of the covenant; indeed that the very possibility of the social contract is best explained by the doctrine of the covenant, and that this acceptance of the social contract serves the best political interests of covenanted communities (like the Jewish People and the Christian Church) in an otherwise secular world.     

The Power of Place: Tourism Development in Costa Rica

Abstract

In this paper, I question how representations of tourist destinations color and are colored by development. Presenting the results of ethnographic fieldwork conducted on the southern Caribbean coast of Costa Rica, I find that the authenticity of portrayals of place is important not for its veracity, but for the social work it performs. Authenticity is not merely socially constructed but expressive of social relations which value people and places. Tourist perceptions of the caribe sur as genuinely underdeveloped—gauged by an analysis of photos and guidebooks as well as surveys—produce an approach to resource use within the community that is limiting. Because the value of the place is its underdevelopment, development itself constrains the possibility of sustaining further growth. Ultimately, reading development via place can be a guide for critically appreciating contemporary patterns of tourism and sustainable development in the caribe sur and elsewhere.     

Tradition and Reform: Aristotle’s Response to Modern Alternatives

Abstract

This essay is an attempt to articulate an Aristotelian alternative to two prominent contemporary ways of understanding human freedom and dependence on the past, and to the implications these understandings have for political life. While a liberal tendency, following Machiavelli’s emphasis on new modes and orders, understands political life to begin with breaking from the past, the more conservative camp in modern thought, following Burke in his emphasis on tradition, understands political life to begin with laws and customs inherited from the past. Aristotle’s teaching in his Nicomachean Ethics on the freedom and responsibility that make human beginnings possible points us, I propose, to a better understanding of political founding than either modern alternative. In the Politics, he connects the city to natural beginnings in the family but also calls the first who founded a city one “responsible for the greatest of goods” (Pol. 1253a31-32). And in the Ethics, he offers his own founding of a way of inquiring about politics, which engages with his predecessors, as a model for politics itself. In this way, Aristotle offers us a deeper understanding of political founding and change, even presenting his own philosophic inquiry in the Ethics as its ground and model.     

The Aleppo question: a Byzantine-Fatimid conflict of interests in Northern Syria in the later tenth century A.D.

Abstract

The ambition to control Syria had always been among the serious temptations of Emperor Nikephoros Phokas (963–969). In the last year of his reign and specifically on October 28th, 969 A.D. two of his generals, Michael Bourtzes and Peter Phokas (the Stratopedarch), at last succeeded in capturing the great city of Antioch. I For the first time in three centuries Byzantium reestablished its authority in Northern Syria, and soon Antioch became a seat of a doux whose responsibility was to guard the southeastern flank of the Empire. Like both the doux of Mesopotamia and that of Chaldia, the doux of Antioch had to supervise the small themes in the new Byzantine territories which came under his jurisdiction. Moreover, as a stronghold Antioch was to serve as the main Byzantine headquarters in all military operations in Syria for years to come.     

The Presidency and the News Media

Abstract

Leo Strauss, often considered a critic of modernity, is famous for his claim that Machiavelli, in turning away from the classical tradition, is its originator. Yet his “Restatement on Xenophon's Hiero” presents a concise indictment of that tradition and a remarkably sympathetic account of the political and philosophic motives that led to the rupture. In light of this tension, Strauss's interest in Xenophon appears as a useful counterweight to both.